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Post by Clinton Cool on Apr 18, 2019 15:22:03 GMT
I see there's a fair bit of 'action' going on in London, with a fair few arrests.
It's a topic pretty close to my heart. I'd personally welcome some proper action. My view is that this would need to include steps to reduce worldwide consumption, rather than the current plan which is to mitigate the effects of it.
What I find baffling is that, having listened to a few from the group carrying out the protests, they don't really seem to have any ideas as to a solution. Certainly, the ones I've seen don't appear to have given up the modern luxuries in life in favour of a more simple, more sustainable lifestyle. It appears to me that they want other people to behave differently, but can't really say how, but don't want to have to 'suffer' any changes themselves. It seems that many of them are types who enjoy going to a good 'demo', whether the issue is Brexit, climate change, or could be pretty well anything else.
Maybe the learned posters here could add to this?
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Post by naughtyfox on Apr 18, 2019 15:43:15 GMT
View from my train between Seinäjoki and Tampere - lakes still frozen.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2019 16:06:10 GMT
I read about a couple of women saying they were unwilling to have kids because of the "grim future". Good !! Except that they probably will in fact have kids as most people do but that's not part of the shock story. Giggle.
As for consumption yes it needs to be dramatically lower but this won't happen.
I tend to think that humans will simply adapt. I have always been a low consumer having lived on less than benefits would pay for my whole life so far, from money someone gave me which is not income generating. No property ownership just boats. No air travel, no new clothes, I almost never buy new consumables in fact. Apart from I once bought a new boat engine. Everyone needs to look at their own behaviour.
Another obvious issue is things like profit-seeking pension funds and older people who expect to have a large disposable income.
Why would anyone need that?
Weird world really but because its driven by greed it can't change.
Well I suppose it can change in theory but it seems that will be either by adaptation or bad shit. I can't see any other alternatives which humans as a species could realistically expect to achieve.
One positive is that life expectancy in general seems to be declining so if that was coupled with a drop in fertility and less reproduction it might help sort out the problems which appear to be on the horizon. Except that you never actually get to the horizon anyway.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2019 16:16:06 GMT
Only simpletons would target public transport as a way of promoting the need to do something about climate change.
Public transport is what we need more of, especially in large cities. Gluing yourself to a DLR train was the work of muppets.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2019 16:18:56 GMT
Yes and getting combustion engined vehicles to slow down is not clever.
Still it gets people talking I suppose. That's the object, its political and has nothing to do with any future climate related events or all the insects suddenly disappearing leading to domino effect ecosystem collapse.
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Post by kris on Apr 18, 2019 16:21:59 GMT
Mind you planting trees in the park might not get as much media coverage.
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Post by peterboat on Apr 18, 2019 16:48:29 GMT
On the positives my green lifestyle is working well, 1.5 hours of travel paid for by the sun with luck tomorrows four hours will be the same
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2019 16:54:32 GMT
Yes I've got about 30 hours boating coming up this weekend all powered by the sun in the form of gasoil At about 0.7 litres per hour its not too terrible. I don't personally believe in humans causing climate change I suspect there is a bigger pattern its just because humans can talk they get all excitable about it. Animals adapt. Humans are animals. The nice weather is pretty cool. I mean gods teeth you might get randomly run over by a bin lorry so best to enjoy the present and not worry about a future which does not exist
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Post by patty on Apr 18, 2019 17:29:06 GMT
Missed all the excitement in London.... Missed all the news.. busy clearing up after sick dog and helping son with van...
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2019 17:34:37 GMT
Plans tomorrow include disrupting heathrow and spoiling peoples easter holidays.
Great way to garner support.........not.
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Post by Clinton Cool on Apr 18, 2019 17:43:27 GMT
I read about a couple of women saying they were unwilling to have kids because of the "grim future". Good !! Except that they probably will in fact have kids as most people do but that's not part of the shock story. Giggle. As for consumption yes it needs to be dramatically lower but this won't happen. I tend to think that humans will simply adapt. I have always been a low consumer having lived on less than benefits would pay for my whole life so far, from money someone gave me which is not income generating. No property ownership just boats. No air travel, no new clothes, I almost never buy new consumables in fact. Apart from I once bought a new boat engine. Everyone needs to look at their own behaviour. Another obvious issue is things like profit-seeking pension funds and older people who expect to have a large disposable income. Why would anyone need that? Weird world really but because its driven by greed it can't change. Well I suppose it can change in theory but it seems that will be either by adaptation or bad shit. I can't see any other alternatives which humans as a species could realistically expect to achieve. One positive is that life expectancy in general seems to be declining so if that was coupled with a drop in fertility and less reproduction it might help sort out the problems which appear to be on the horizon. Except that you never actually get to the horizon anyway. To pick up on the point regarding the elderly and pensions: totally agree. There's a whole lot of scaring going on, folk being told that if they don't save x amount per week they will be old and miserable. The elderly, in general, tend to have less things to pay for. I know not everyone owns their own home but many do, saving on housing costs. While some elderly people might want to travel the world or participate in expensive extreme sports and the like I think it's fair to say that this tends to be the domain of younger folk. Old people tend not to have expensive children to pay for, and are less likely to have debts they need to service. And then, if you completely disregard the advice to save the government will pick up the tab anyway, making sure you have at least double what a younger unemployed person would receive in benefits. The scaring of folk into putting sums into pensions they can barely afford has little to do with the welfare of people. Rather, it's how the pensions industry generates the revenues that enables it to make large profits.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2019 18:16:56 GMT
I can understand people planning for the future (I don't do it and may live to regret that) but the massive wealth generated by individuals in charge of pension funds and hedge funds who profit simply from fear and greed just seems too nasty.
I'm sure this is something that a sentient and (theoretically) knowledge based group such as humans could avoid by using their brains. But then again maybe it does all come down to basic animal instincts at the end of the day.
Greed and fear are powerful drivers.
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2019 18:19:08 GMT
We need to stop producing crap we don’t really need, and we need to stop doing stuff we don’t need to do. It’s that simple. Well unfortunately (although true) everyone has a different idea about the word ‘need’. I mean, do I really need this smart phone I type this out on? Would I really suffer (and those around me) if I chucked it in the cut? Don’t answer that....
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Post by Deleted on Apr 18, 2019 20:07:11 GMT
We need to stop producing crap we don’t really need, and we need to stop doing stuff we don’t need to do. It’s that simple. Well unfortunately (although true) everyone has a different idea about the word ‘need’. I mean, do I really need this smart phone I type this out on? Would I really suffer (and those around me) if I chucked it in the cut? Don’t answer that.... This is something which really annoys me. I have never bought a new phone or computer or tablet. I'm perfectly happy with older stuff as it does what I need to do. Current Laptop 2013 phone 2015 tablet 2016 all second hand and cheap as chips as were previous devices. The greed driven IT system is based on obsolescence and ever bigger more power and data hungry software. The especially sad thing about this is that humans will eventually make themselves obselete then the money will start shouting, never mind talking. Mind you if we do get proper autonomous products like cars (25 years away in reality if you ignore the salesmen ) then maybe people could do more enjoyable things but that would rely on the others who are getting the massive profits sharing a bit of the money. They will have to do that otherwise there are no profits. Silly situation. The starting sequence of Terminator looks quite prescient bearing in mind it was 35 years ago!
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Post by Deleted on Apr 19, 2019 3:34:40 GMT
We need to stop producing crap we don’t really need, and we need to stop doing stuff we don’t need to do. It’s that simple. Well unfortunately (although true) everyone has a different idea about the word ‘need’. I mean, do I really need this smart phone I type this out on? Would I really suffer (and those around me) if I chucked it in the cut? Don’t answer that.... This is something which really annoys me. I have never bought a new phone or computer or tablet. I'm perfectly happy with older stuff as it does what I need to do. Current Laptop 2013 phone 2015 tablet 2016 all second hand and cheap as chips as were previous devices. The greed driven IT system is based on obsolescence and ever bigger more power and data hungry software. The especially sad thing about this is that humans will eventually make themselves obselete then the money will start shouting, never mind talking. Mind you if we do get proper autonomous products like cars (25 years away in reality if you ignore the salesmen ) then maybe people could do more enjoyable things but that would rely on the others who are getting the massive profits sharing a bit of the money. They will have to do that otherwise there are no profits. Silly situation. The starting sequence of Terminator looks quite prescient bearing in mind it was 35 years ago! The thing is that I enjoy doing manual stuff. Driving, cooking, walking, playing/writing music, messing about with my ham radio. Once we automate everything,what exactly are we going to do to ‘enjoy’ our freed up time? A good example is how new data techniques used in ham radio can automatically make contacts with people without any human intervention (FT8 if anyone wants to read up on it). I’ve gone back to the old way of actually talking to people as it’s more enjoyable.
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